A Slow Sort of Hell
by NDV
Summary: A glimpse into the background of one of our beloved female CSIs... involves cocaine, alcohol, child molestation, and a few other things...


A Slow Sort of Hell  
  
-Liza (lizaausten@tri-countynet.net or malenka@malenkaya.com)  
  
Disclaimers/Spoilers/Ratings/other nonsense: I don't own the characters that show up on the show, so whatever. I also don't own the song. I altered two, okay three, words in the first stanza to fit this better, but they were all short words and have basically no bearing on the direction anyway. Any spoilers that are referenced here are not actually… you know, out-and- out referenced, except the existence of Catherine, Eddie, Lindsay, Sam Braun, et cetera. Most of it's just speculation based on a line here and a line there. The rating is probably something akin to R, because of references to illegal substances such as cocaine and heroin, alcohol, child molestation, strip clubs, bad hair cuts, and more to come. Consider yourself informed, warned, and et cetera.  
  
Important Note: This is part of a series that crosses several fandoms (currently, CSI, the West Wing, and ER are being planned, possibly the Division, – but NONE of these are crossovers. I am not a crossover fan, myself, so I don't write crossovers). The first being this one, A Slow Sort of Hell, based upon the first stanza of the song "Picture" by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. If you'd like to read the others, please contact me at lizaausten@tri-countynet.net and I'll gladly provide you with a copy or a link to the other(s). The understanding of each story depends only on that one, meaning you don't have to read any of the others if you're so inclined. They're all stand alone, but have the song in common – a different stanza per story.  
  
My thanks go to Claudie for the reading, editing, idea-bouncing, and helping, and a good friend for making me listen to the song (I think she prefers to remain nameless).  
  
I love hearing opinions, good or bad, and feedback is this girl's best friend. Eh, who needs jewelry anyway?  
  
  
  
A Slow Sort of Hell  
  
-Living my life in a slow hell  
  
Different one every night at the hotel  
  
I ain't seen the sunshine in three damn days  
  
Been fueling up on cocaine and whiskey  
  
Wish I had someone to miss me  
  
Lord I wonder if I'll ever change my ways-  
  
They'd lived downtown, her family, downtown Las Vegas where girls stood on the corners in impossibly short skirts and leopard print bustiers, and if you went downstairs you could hear them laughing as they huffed cocaine, smoked pot, and did various other things with the favorites from their clientele pool. Her mother called them "the family", but always told her to stay upstairs and avoid the back entrance with which the men, and occasionally women, came and went. She always claimed that she wanted her Caty to be aware of the world around her but safe from the dangers that lurked in the apartment building's basement.  
  
When she was twelve years old, Sam had 'hit it big' and landed himself a good job in one of those Vegas casinos that could actually be considered upscale. He'd visited less and less as the months passed until just before her thirteenth birthday when she'd lain awake in the pantry- turned-bedroom and listened to her mother send him away for good. She'd cried herself to sleep that night, and two weeks later her mother had brought home a bouncer – from the local club – one who had a taste for young redheads and their even younger daughters.  
  
She'd turned thirteen three weeks later, bruised and angry, wondering just what she'd done wrong and why Mommy never told him to stay away, never told him no. She cowered under her blanket on the floor, never having had a mattress or a bed frame, smelling of beer and sex, until the muffled sound of the television covered the rest. And during that night in 1978, she stood in the opened doorway of the basement room, watching the landlord and another tenant laugh and grunt as they fucked, and in less than an hour she stood before a table with three others, long red hair frazzled and matted as she did her first line of cocaine.  
  
It was five years, a runaway, and a few clubs later that she saw Sam Braun again down on the strip, and when he looked at her she fought the urge to cover herself, opting to throw a leg around her pole instead.  
  
When she'd finally looked at him he was still watching her – now with the almost fatherly shame she expected, nor the pride she was afraid of, but with an appraising eye, as a jeweler would inspect his diamonds – and finally he managed to say, "You look so like your mother."  
  
His expression was pained as she walked from the stage that night, long legs and waist length hair, a world weary expression painted across her face. She'd ran the two blocks and gone home to Eddie, who'd fallen asleep with a half empty whiskey bottle in his hand. She took out a mirror and razor, taking the whiskey with her, and threw back a few shots as she set about cutting the powder 'just so'.  
  
She ruptured an artery in her nose that night, and it was the last line of cocaine she ever did. She took a few more shots and hoped not to vomit as she wiped blood from the linoleum, and when Sam returned to the club a week later to tell her her mother was dead, he was told that she'd 'moved on'.  
  
She'd done her last line of cocaine, but she kept dancing and loved her whiskey, and then he brought her the heroin.  
  
---  
  
She cut her hair.  
  
It had been late when he'd come home, and he'd found her standing before the bathroom mirror fingering the jaggedly cut ends of her hair, glazed eyes staring haunted into the mirror as he watched her. His face was an angry sort of red, two bags clutched in his right fist as his left hand circled around the front her neck, forcing her backward against his shoulder and threatening to cut off her air supply.  
  
"You cut your hair," he'd whispered, his tongue trailing from the side of her ear downward across her cheekbone, and she thrashed against him trying to pull away.  
  
"Way to state the obvious," she'd replied, and ducked, twisting away from his hands and his anger, watching with barely concealed amusement as he opened his right fist and dropped the baggies to the counter, and she furiously wiped at the right side of her face, wishing him away.  
  
He had asked her what the bags contained, and clean white powder spilled on the table when she took them into the kitchen and sat down in her favorite chair, just before the bay window. She had said nothing, instead fumbling beneath the chair with one hand and pulling at a piece of tape, another bag falling into her hand once it had been loosed. She shook out her hair, uneven strands of red falling against her shoulders where it was long enough, the rest against her neck, and she laid a straw to her right and the razor to her left, and had then looked up at him expectantly. "It's exactly what you think it is," she'd told him, and he wanted to hit her just for the way she looked at him, as if she expected him to. He clenched his fist and bit the inside of his mouth, looking away with a glassy appearance to his own eyes. He wanted to hit her, knock the smirk off of her face and slice her with the blade she would soon be cutting what she called her merchandise with, but he didn't because he couldn't, because he'd made his promises and said his piece long ago. And even if it killed him, he wouldn't hit her, and if it killed her, he wouldn't be surprised.  
  
He'd mentioned rehab to her once, to which she'd just looked up at him with a raised eyebrow and her trademark little smirk and gone into the other room with the whiskey bottle she'd stolen from him and a straw she'd just cut to the perfect length. "You're going to ruin your nose," he'd told her once, and she'd just laughed and switched nostrils, and then she'd stood to her feet and kissed him, leaving him to stand and observe as she headed to the newest club, and he knew he'd find her there later that night, dancing at the end of the stage, entrancing men that weren't him. No, she had him and she knew it, and she didn't want him anymore. And then, he had wanted to hit her and he almost had, and she knew that, too, so she left him for a while, called him from a motel three days later, crying about the roach that was crawling towards her on the floor. Only, there were no roaches and her nose was bloody when he found her, and he knew she hadn't been dancing, and when he took her back she'd been fired for not showing up, and she cried when he told her he still loved her.  
  
She had him and she didn't want him anymore, and she cut her hair when she realized that it was the only change she'd ever be able to make because she had ruined her nose long ago and kept dancing even when she knew she shouldn't, and she was twenty-four years old and hadn't seen Sam or her mother in nine years. She'd cut her hair because she'd cried until she couldn't see, so when the scissors sliced the locks she didn't see the metal or the falling, and when she walked into the kitchen with her two little bags and retrieved her razor and her straw she knew it would be the last time for the heroin as it had been the last line of cocaine, because it was too late for her to save her soul, but it wasn't too late for her to save herself. 


End file.
